Hello.

This blog is a great way to get to know me. Right now, most of what I write about is my family, growing a creative business, and my passion for helping grow the local church. I love speaking to businesses, churches, and groups about developing a vision and pursuing it with passion.

Bean dip, bb guns, and a great woman

Below is a post I wrote over two years ago. Yesterday we laid Granny to rest in Gorman, Texas. It’s funny because when I think about the fact that she’s gone, I don’t get very sad. I think because Alzheimer’s took her mind so long ago. What makes me cry though, is when I think of her in Heaven sitting at the table with our great King. She is now free of a mind and body that failed her. She is back to being the amazing woman who loved us all. If, in my life, I can help and love half the people she did, I’ll be doing very well.

I’m always amazed at the power of our senses to transport us to a different time and place.

On a recent grocery run, I grabbed a bag of Ruffles Sour Cream & Onion chips. It was just a normal afternoon. There was nothing remarkable about it, and that’s usually when something extraordinary happens. A few chips sounded like a great mid-day snack. As that first chip hit my tongue, I was gone.

Suddenly, I was six years old, sitting at a light brown card table in my Grandma’s living room. I was munching on a few chips while Granny, as I call her, was in the kitchen making a bowl of bean dip. The Rangers were playing a Saturday afternoon game on the TV. A game of Yahtzee was spread out on the table in front of me.

Granny walks in with the bowl of bean dip and a small plate with sliced cheese. She always spoiled me. My favorite meal at her house was chips, bean dip and cheese. Real healthy.

That one little taste of a chip brought back memories I hadn’t experienced in years. Even as I write this, I marvel at the wonderful memories, while still being sad they will never happen again.

My brother and I would rotate spending the night with her on Fridays. She lived in a small mobile home just outside Snyder, in West Texas.

I am reminded of how much fun we used to have, but especially the little details. I remember the sound of the heater in the winter. Being a mobile home, the heat came through vents in the floor. I used to love laying by those vents, soaking up the heat. I remember watching ball games with her while she introduced me to games like Wahoo and dominoes. Always on the rickety little card table.

The porch outside was surrounded by black metal railing that seemed a little too wobbly to actually stop someone from falling off. Down the cold concrete stairs was the large circular driveway with small dips in it. When it rained, the dips would fill up and become vast oceans for my G.I. Joes to fight around.

Then, there was my first bb gun. Granny would take me to shoot cans out near the woods. I became the first grandson to shoot her when one rogue bb ricocheted off a can and hit her in the shin. She never let me forget that.

I remember her small blue car, I think it was a Chevrolet, and the trips to town we would go on. On one of those trips to the local K-Mart, she bought me a small Hot Wheels car. It was an army vehicle with moving missles and everything. I felt so special because she spent all her “silver money” on it. I think it was a grand total of seventy five cents, but I felt like royalty because she had given everything she had in her coin purse.

In the grand scheme of things, a very small part of my life was spent at Granny’s, but it continues to influence me even today.

Today Granny lives in an assisted living center in Weatherford. Her health seems to get worse week by week, and we’re not sure how long she will remain with us. When I see her now, she often mistakes me for my Dad. She doesn’t remember much, but one thing she always tells me is about the fact that Cody and I always stayed with her and “never forgot who’s turn it was to spend the night.”

They say within three generations no one will remember you. As I think of my Granny, that makes me very sad that if I don’t do something, my kids and their kids after them will know nothing of this great woman and the influence she had on my life. It’s our job to make sure no one forgets the great ones. And Granny truly is one of the great ones.